SOFTWARE TOOLS FOR THE VALIDATION OF THE IN-FLIGHT CALIBRATION PERFORMANCE OF THE MICROSCOPE SPACE MISSION
Résumé
The MICROSCOPE space mission aims at testing the Equivalence Principle (EP) with an accuracy of 10-15. The instrument will be embarked on board a drag-free microsatellite orbiting the Earth, and consists in a differential electrostatic accelerometer composed of two cylindrical test masses submitted to the same gravitational field but made of different materials. The electrostatic accelerations applied to the masses to maintain them relatively motionless are measured; inequality would demonstrate a violation of the universality of free fall. The accuracy of the measurement exploited for the EP test is limited by our a priori knowledge of the instrument physical parameters. An in-orbit calibration is needed to finely characterize them in order to correct the measurement. The calibration procedures have been determined and their analytical performances evaluated. The two stages of the measurement processing are numerically simulated: first the calibration sessions, then the measurement correction using the estimated parameters in order to validate the mission performance on the EP parameter determination.
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